Continuing advances by the communications industry in developing new equipment has spawned a variety of networking services that integrate multiple types of information signals (e.g. the simultaneous exchange of audio, video and data (e.g. PC file and command data) in teleconferencing networks) into a shared, multi-site system through which a customer may send and receive information to any other subscriber of a particular service. Unfortunately, because the hardware and communication characteristics (e.g. types of architecture, such as fiber-optic, satellite, copper links, signaling rates, protocols, etc.) of the services are typically different from one another, it is not usually been possible to interconnect different network architectures, so as to permit simultaneous transmission and reception of information among plural sites of different networks.
A principal impediment to simultaneous communications among multiple subscribers of different network architectures is the fact that each system operates at a different clock rate, so that data cannot be readily passed from one node to another. Because of this limitation, subscribers may be faced with the costly and operator intensive task of installing multiple types of equipment associated with different carriers, in order to realize geographically dispersed communication coverage. Even where the available network coverage is reasonably widespread, all nodes of the system are required to operate with the same clock (provided by the carrier). Not only does such a synchronous system limit user flexibility in choice of equipment, but, should the master clock die, the entire network goes down.